What was Russia like in the middle of the 19th century? Summary of "Notes of a hunter"

2024 Author: Leah Sherlock | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 05:25

I will begin my story about the outstanding Master of the Word, born of the Russian Land, with one remarkable episode. An incident that he himself recalled more than once with warmth and gratitude. Two young artisans approached Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev at a small railway station and asked if the author of the Hunter's Notes was really standing in front of them. Hearing an affirmative answer, they both bowed to him from the waist, saying that it was a bow from the entire Russian people to him (in the middle - the end of the 18th century, knowing the summary of the "Hunter's Notes" was a sign of good taste). Believe me, dear readers, that this was not at all an impulsive act of young people. It was a profound demonstration of the writer's personal role in the abolition of serfdom.

Let's move on to the characteristics of the book. In the beginning, we note: only two people could write at such a masterful level - poetry in prose: Gogol and Turgenev. Revealing the summary of the "Noteshunter", one should begin with the poetic and subtle Turgenev's story "Khor and Kalinich". Its main idea is the inter-caste friendship of two people - a landowner and a serf, which is possible, perhaps, only in Russia. The calm, measured logic of the landowner Khory is harmoniously complemented by the emotionality of Kalinich.

The main character of Turgenev, holding together the composition of "Notes …", is an enlightened landowner of the Oryol province, in love with his small homeland. On behalf of this traveler in his native black earth, Turgenev expounds “Notes of a Hunter”. The content of the stories is many-sided: either the hunter will overhear the conversations of the boys who led the horses out into the night (“Bezhin meadow”), then he will reverently tell about a folk song that takes the soul (“Singers”), then he will share the secret - about an enlightened person who can be called the conscience of his native land, about God's Wanderer Kasyan with a Beautiful Sword.

century. Landownership was then the main form of farming. However, the landowners contemporary to Ivan Sergeevich were, in their temperament and imperious charisma, far from Catherine's grandees ("Raspberry Water"). Formulating a summary of the “Notes of a Hunter”, we can say that serfdom in the 19th century completely exhausted itself. There was not that scope, domesticlandlords practiced nit-picking and punishment to control their slaves.

Serfs, in turn, have no rights. They can be easily offended, made unhappy, they cannot properly manage themselves and their lives. It is not surprising that a deformed society that turned people into slaves deprived many serfs of social activity. A hopeless life often inclined laborers to drunkenness, lies, laziness.

Often the entire household was left to the women while the men drank. And when it became completely unbearable to live, stupid and cruel bloody riots broke out. Original title "Knocks!" the writer gave one of his works. The idea that there is a risk of escalating violence in society is the summary of the story. The "Hunter's Notes" are, as it were, ideologically generalized by the allegorical later story "Mumu": the mighty dumb people blindly obey the narrow-minded, petty mistress.

Turgenev's cycle of stories (finally published in 1852) played a prominent role in the emancipation of the peasantry. Let us explain the last thought (after all, we already know the summary of the Hunter's Notes). Being a deep lyricist, Ivan Sergeevich, undoubtedly, was aware of his duty to society. Although Turgenev was not a lover of biting, harsh vocabulary, denouncing petty petty tyrant landlords, he nevertheless fully displayed the cruelty, narrow-mindedness, moral bankruptcy of the landowners Zverkov, Stegunov, and Penochkin. He used a more powerful weapon - pinching,for the soul taking the truth. The above cycle of stories, as the chronicles testify, made a deep impression on the Russian Emperor Alexander II, who read it more than once. As you know, the people themselves gratefully called this king, who abolished serfdom, the Liberator.